“Catholics” is a pretty broad label. Abortion advocate John Kerry claims to be Catholic and so do openly-gay parishioners at St. Joan of Arc in Minneapolis as well as traditionalists who attend St. Agnes in St. Paul.

Who did they poll?

How was the question worded?

Silly Doakes. Raw data is for gatekeepers.

Let’s take a look at Hogan’s piece:

A majority of U.S. Catholics support President Obama’s decision to require religious institutions to include birth control in health insurance plans, according to two new polls.

A poll by the Public Religion Research Institute in Washington, D.C., found that support among Catholics (58 percent) is higher than that of the American public overall (55 percent).

And who exactly is the “Public Religion Research Institute? They describe themselves as “non-partisan”, which pretty much inevitably means “left-leaning”. You be the judge. Their piece on the poll doesn’t go into a lot more detail than Hogan’s puff piece.

Likewise, a Public Policy Polling survey commissioned by Planned Parenthood found that Obama’s position enjoys support from 56 percent of American voters. Of the Catholics polled, 53 percent agreed with the president.

Meanwhile, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops continues to decry the president’s decision, saying that it violates religious freedom.

And as we’ve noted in the past, PPP voter polls trend left of reality.

Look – I’ve expressed my skepticism that the Catholic Street really cares that much about the issue, or that the “middle management” would choose Vatican doctrine over progressivism. It could be that the polls are accurate. Since they seem to confirm my hunch, that’s a point in their favor [1]

But who did they poll? What questions did they ask?

And, more importantlly, why aren’t they teliling us who they polled and what they asked?

The PRRI was only formed in 2009. Here’s a list of its board members: http://publicreligion.org/about/board-of-directors/
The board is ecumenical, to say the least. It includes no Catholics.
I wouldn’t take anything they said on the topic on non-ecumenical religion seriously, but then, I do not work for the WaPo.

The point being, an insurance contract is a private contract between a consumer and a provider. The federal government has absolutely no business involving itself unless the consumer is a government employee. But we are in the era of Obama Imperial Mandates. In his second reign, er, I mean term, he will be mandating what type of toilet paper you will be allowed to purchase. That soft, fluffy paper uses too many trees.

Methodology doesn’t matter to lefty pollsters. What they seek to conclude through their polls is that God is dead, or at least, irrelevant; and that followers of God are misguided miscreants and reality-addled buffoons – you know, Republicans. Then, they can splash it across their mastheads for the American Idol/Lady Gaga crowd to consume as “news.”

One question that might be asked is: Did they actually ask ANYBODY, or did they just make this up? There is a whole book called “how to lie with statistics” and you don’t need to have actually data to do it.